Science

1:08pm

The Two-Way

A manatee spotted in the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal on Thursday. It's very unusual for the Florida native to get so far north.

Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife

A manatee was seen swimming in a northern canal that joins the Chesapeake Bay with the smaller and shallower Delaware Bay just days after the marine mammal was spotted in an estuary of the Potomac River.

The docile "sea cow," is normally found in the warm waters of Florida and is a rare sight so far north.

12:10pm

The Salt

"It now pays to get a lot of pleasure out of a little bit of sugar," says Danielle Reed, a scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

Ryan KellmanNPR

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1:53

Listen to the Story

Sugar gives the human brain much pleasure. But not everyone revels in cupcakes with an inch of frosting, or milkshakes blended with candy bars, though these crazily sugary treats are increasingly the norm.

10:39am

Shots - Health News

Youngsters aren't the only ones who have an affinity for consuming a lot of alcohol in a short amount of time – in other words, harmful drinking. It turns out, the parents and grandparents of millennials know how to binge drink, too.

Adults over age 50 who are healthy, active, sociable and well-off are more at risk for harmful drinking than their peers, according to a study published in the BMJ on Thursday.

The paper talked to Robert Bayer, executive director of The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, who said that the actual odds of catching an orange lobster would just be a guess. But "it's one in several million, there's no doubt about that," he said.

1:35pm

The Two-Way

Artist's concept compares Earth (left) to the new planet, called Kepler-452b, which is about 60 percent larger in diameter.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope has spotted the first roughly Earth-sized world orbiting in the "Goldilocks zone" of another star – offering perhaps the best bet so far for life elsewhere in the universe.

A year on Kepler-452b, which is about 1,400 light years from us in the constellation Cygnus, is 385 days, meaning its orbit is just a bit farther away from its star than the Earth is from the sun. That places it squarely within what planetary scientists call the habitable zone, or "Goldilocks" zone — not too cold and not too hot.